Don VerKuilen Archives - Cleveland Classical

Singers Club of Cleveland to take its spring program on tour to the Baltics

April 27, 2023 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

One of Northeast Ohio’s oldest continuing ensembles, The Singers Club of Cleveland, made its debut in the chapel of First Baptist Church on April 19, 1894.

The all-male chorus, which had tallied up 1,663 members by the time its entry in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History was written in 1995, will return to First Baptist Church for a spring concert on Friday, April 28 at 7 pm — not to the edifice where the chorus sang its first concert, but to its new Gothic building designed by Walker and Weeks and dedicated in 1929.

Friday’s concert will also set the distinguished ensemble off on a new course. Having stayed close to home for over a century, the Singers Club will embark on a week-long tour of Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in June.

“We’re going to be there during the Summer Solstice, which is a huge celebration in the Baltics,” music director Don Verkuilen said in a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Singers’ Club appoints new artistic director

May 11, 2020 by ccadmin

The Singers’ Club of Cleveland has named local conductor and musician Don VerKuilen as its new artistic director, effective June 1.

VerKuilen is the Director of Music and Liturgy at Saint Rocco Parish on Cleveland’s West Side, where he serves as organist and directs all choirs, including a schola cantorum he has created for the return of the Latin Mass.

VerKuilen has directed choirs across the United States as guest conductor and has held choral directing positions in prominent churches, including Pulaski Heights Methodist in Little Rock, Arkansas, and The Old Stone Church, Cleveland. He has performed as concert organist across the United States and Europe. VerKuilen began his organ and conducting studies at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and is continuing those studies at The Cleveland Institute of Music.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Repertory Orchestra’s season opener contemplates circles of life (Nov. 2)

by Stephanie Manning

“This moment is full of wonders.” Composer Anna Clyne meditated on those words — written by Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh — as she wrote her orchestral work This Moment. That theme, of learning to cherish life more by reflecting on death, underscored most of the music chosen for the Cleveland Repertory Orchestra’s program on November 2.

The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Christian Church hosted the season-opening concert, titled “Reflection and Revelations.” The venue’s dry acoustic helped the textures remain clear in Clyne’s piece, a somber and meditative seven minutes. [Read on…]

Pianist Garrick Ohlsson, conductor Daniel Reith lead Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven concert (Nov. 9)

by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A relaxed understanding born of a long career helped pianist Garrick Ohlsson bring easy grace and Proto-Romantic sensibility to Beethoven’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra.

The program on Saturday at Severance Music Center featured early and middle works, the second set of concerts in the Orchestra’s cycle of Beethoven piano concertos.

Despite its number, the Second Concerto is actually the composer’s first, begun in 1790. Ohlsson treated this early Beethoven work expressively, with sinuous rubato, keeping his rhythms precise, his touch light, and his rhetoric clear. Nothing, not even Beethoven’s many technical snares, seemed to faze him.

[Read on…]

See all reviews

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us